Holiday!

Sometimes, tough choices do not need to be made, as I learned during this past holiday season in Senegal.  Should I have a party for my family again, or go see a rap super group?  Should I serve cookies or brownies?  Should I cook on Christmas, or be served by a lovely Vietnamese woman endorsed by the ambassadors of numerous countries?  Should I sit, or should I dance?  Should I watch a movie about meth, or a comedy?  The answer is yes, to everything.  Christmas 2012: A case study in having your cake and eating it too.

I decided to hold my second annual holiday party for my host family, though to be honest, they seemed pretty ambivalent.  Even Bigue, who delighted in last year’s festivities, proved that Christmas at five years old is different than four.  Last year she was all about hot chocolate and snowflakes.  This year, she just kept yelling, “PERE NOEL BETTER BRING ME SOMETHING GOOD!”  For the record, he did: she ended up with a geo-safari-esque computer learning game.  And for the record, I was not Pere Noel. 

The snowflakes are still hung on random trees around our compound, YES.

Luckily for my family, their lack of enthusiasm did not deter me.  I made sugar cookies in weird shapes traced with cardboard, whipped up colored frosting, sewed a tree made of scrap fabric, made new stockings for the new family members, popped two bags of popcorn, set up supplies for snowflake making, and invited all the girls from my health club to the party.  My underlying message was YOU WILL TAKE THIS HOLIDAY AND YOU WILL LOVE IT.  The party seemed moderately successful, buoyed by the fact that host mom happened to be out of town, which made it an unsupervised party.  I mean, Joyce and I were there, and I guess we’re adults.  But not real adults.  Not sassy, angry Senegalese adults.  So the kids all really cut loose and I think they had a good time.  Christmas Step 1: NICE.

Festive treats!

Decorations!

Later that night, I headed out to a Daara J concert.  Daara J is Senegal’s rap super group, and I had VIP tickets!  But first, someone had to try to mug me again.  Yes.  I appear vulnerable and easily defeated.  As Joyce and I rode our bikes down the street at 7:30pm, someone jumped out of the bushes and tried to rip my bag off my bike.  It was terrifying.  I imagine it’s very similar to hitting a deer with your car, only the deer jumps in your car tries to rip off your head.  Luckily, I just kept peddling, and the $1 purse I bought at the market refused to break.  A Christmas miracle!  I went to the concert and all was well.  Christmas Step 2: SUCCESS.

The next day, I headed up to St. Louis, one of my favorite cities, to spend Christmas with some of my favorite people.  I rented a house with a few other volunteers, and we decorated with tinsel, stockings, tiny trees, and presents wrapped in plastic bags.  One of my housemates was a Christmas Eve baby, so we all went out to celebrate her birthday in addition to that of our Lord and Savior.  At one point, we ended up at the fateful dance club which has thrown me to the curb one too many times for always dancing and never buying anything.  I just wanna dance!  This time, I came in and danced, and they let me, and they let all of us!  Christmas Step 3: Dancing.  Check.

A Sorority House Christmas

On Christmas Eve, a local restaurant was kind enough to host our big Peace Corps group and home-cooked dinner.  My house didn’t have a kitchen, but we did our best to cook mashed potatoes, mulled wine, and mix up a salad with one pot and one gas tank while jamming out to Christmas music. 

We also had no spoons, which meant we had to stir and taste-test our food with daggers.

As a whole group, we managed to deliver an amazing meal of meat, pasta, seafood, bean dips, charcuterie, cheese, tapas, and desserts along with our house’s contributions.  It was a thoroughly delicious Christmas meal, and definitely the best Christmas dinner that could be made in Senegal.  On Christmas Day itself, I watched Winter’s Bone (my friends thought the title made it sound holiday-esque... no, unless holidays are a time to appreciate not being addicted to meth) and Moonrise Kingdom.  We also went to a rooftop, ocean-view liquor tasting and then ate at one of my favorite restaurants in country, Restaurant Saigon.  Coconut Chicken Curry and Pho: the Christmas dinner of champions!  We also finally exchanged white elephant gifts, and I ended up with a sassy pair of culotte pants and a book about a girl raised by hippies in an Indian ashram.   Step 4: everything else, done.

And New Year’s?  My friend Nicky’s family was visiting, and a few of us joined them in a lovely beach house.  We cooked a lot of pasta, braved freezing water, danced on a makeshift sand stage, and ducked behind wooden boats as a nearby hotel accidentally shot fireworks at us while blasting an Ultimate ABBA disco remix.  I also got into a fight with a small child over a party hat.  At 11:50pm, we went on a photo binge to document every last drop out of 2012.  

Hats provided by Nicky's family.

It was my second holiday season away from home, and while it was hard, I feel like I figured out how to do things a lot better this time around.  Lots of phone calls, lots of baked goods, and making sure a few well-worn traditions happened – my keys to a good holiday.  But ultimately, I look forward to next year, when I’ll hopefully be back doing the usual – holiday parties, a ridiculously decorated and electrifying tree, driving to light festivals, Christkindlmarkt, Christmas Eve with the family, morning with mom and my sister, Christmas Day movie with the sisters, Maggie’s birthday, and watching strangers fall into trash cans as we all sing “The World’s Greatest” at a house party in Chicago.  2013 is going to be bomb.

Let's Hear It For the Boy!

I feel like I’ve talked a lot about some of the girls in my life here – their situations, their challenges, and how I’ve been working with them.  The situation for boys and men, on the other hand, is just as interesting, and I suppose challenging in its own way.  I do a lot of work with SeneGAD, our gender and development group, and one of our big pushes for 2013 is Men As Partners’ Tournees.  Some of our Language and Cultural Facilitators (LCFs), who are the Senegalese teachers who guide us as we learn Wolof, Pulaar, cultural intricacies, and everything in between during our first few months, have been trained to lead gender awareness talks for other Senegalese groups.  Some of the male LCFs wanted to specifically target men for these talks, so we’re hosting them around the country to lead gender discussions.

Personally, I have a complicated relationship with males in this country.  I live in a female-dominated household, with only two host brothers, a quiet 14 year old and a raucous toddler.  Living in a city, I deal with more street harassment than a typical Peace Corps volunteer, and almost all of it comes from males aged 15-25.  These are the people who yell at me in baby voices, hurl racial slurs at me, chase me and ask me to marry them, and basically try to provoke me in any possible way for their personal amusement.  I’m sure there are plenty of nice, upstanding men roaming the streets of Senegal, but for my own personal sanity, I sacrificed interacting with them.  Maybe this is unfair, but ultimately, it was a survival mechanism.

Some great guys from my English class, including Pape Samba, who is somehow involved in every single project I've ever heard of in Thies

Then again, I’m also aware that men face their own challenges here.  Certainly, I do think their lives are easier than the lives of women.  Women, after all, are the ones who clean morning through night, cook all of the food, chase after the children, lug water, and run errands.  During all of this, men are usually lying on mats and being responsible for the labor intensive process of making tea.  That was sarcasm.  You can make tea lying down.  But as my English class of men, really great, open-minded men, once explained to me, men are responsible for supporting everyone, their households, extended families, and relatives.  And in an economy where almost half of the population is unemployed (in 2007, the CIA World Fact Book said the unemployment rate was 48%), that can be quite a hefty burden.  The culture says their job is to have a job, and when they can’t do that, they feel helpless: there’s nothing to do but try and look busy.  There’s nothing to do but try to feel like they’re contributing, maybe by making tea for everyone.

I’ve tried to take that perspective and let it temper the annoyance I have with the men I run into every day.  At the garage, which is the transportation center, you can’t go two steps without some man accosting you about where you’re going, then trying to direct you to a car or bus.  I used to find this process incredibly annoying – I know where the cars are, thank you very much, I take them every week, I live here, let go of my bag, I can walk over there myself.  I used to think that all of their aggression and insistence was related to the prospect of getting a commission for delivering a passenger.  But I’ve since realized that actually, most of these guys just want to feel like they’re doing something. 

Some of the great Life Skills coordinators and teachers from St. Louis and Louga.  

It’s the same with the men we sometimes pass standing in the middle of the road, directing traffic.  They aren’t policemen or traffic controllers or transportation leaders.  They’re literally just normal men who stop to take this up.  The other day a male security guard described how I would need to wait in a line before using the ATM.  Thank you, sir.  I wasn’t sure what this progression of people standing outside the bank was, and I had no idea that I should stand at the end and wait until the person in front of me takes a turn.  But then again, he just wanted a job to do.  I think they all might just be normal men who want to feel useful. And isn’t that what we all want?

It doesn’t help that Senegal is deeply entrenched in the talibe system, which sends young boys to religious schools, or daaras, at a young age to study the Koran.  In many ways, this system is a noble religious tradition, keeping Arabic and Koranic studies alive for the younger generations.  But often, it becomes an easy way for families to discard young boys when they can’t support them.  Someone once commented to me about the lack of orphans in Senegal.  She attributed it to the lack of AIDS crisis, which I think does play a part. But I also think Senegal lacks orphans because overtaxed families hold on to their girls, who can provide in-home labor, and send their boys to daaras instead of simply giving them up.  In a way, daaras are culturally-approved, free boarding schools.

At many daaras, there isn’t enough money to support the high number of students, and the compulsory begging meant to teach humility becomes a necessity for running the school and feeding the kids.  At worst, some corrupt marabouts make kids beg and keep money for themselves.  Daaras run the gamut: there are good ones and not-so-good ones, and there are some that incorporate progressive, French schooling and some with frightening levels of abuse. The talibe system as a whole obviously has all sorts of consequences for Senegal, but for me, one of the most interesting is the sheer amount of teenage boys without real-world skills it produces.  As one PCV once explained, so many boys leave their daaras with only Arabic fluency and the ability to beg.  They struggle when they return home to their villages, and many end up back in the cities, hawking phone credit, newspapers, magazines, or working in the garages – doing what they’ve done best for the past 10 years.  And I think many of them end up as the bored, listless boys who can find nothing to do except sit outside and yell at the random American girl who passes by on her bike.

Women hold incredible potential to develop Senegal further, and they should be supported.  But then again, men here are not the enemy – like the women, they are trapped in a lot of systems of their own.  Then again, because men hold more power, they have more power to change things.  It’s funny: whenever I talk to a Senegalese person about implementing some kind of gender discussion for men, their agreement always takes the same response – “Yes, because sexual abuse happens to boys too!”  That is true, but let’s be honest: men represent something less than 5% of sexual abuse victims, but yet, this is the default understanding of men and gender in this country.  In other words, few people have any idea of the power and connections that men hold to shift gender ideals, and ultimately, health, economic, and environmental ideals, for both women and themselves.

So here’s to the boys and seeing how our new, male-centered gender initiatives pan out.  And here’s to that hopeful day in the future where I can be less scary on my bike and maybe even drop a smile or two to passerbys on the street.

Two of my favorite Senegalese guys: my host dad and Mohammad

Cape Verde: Wild, Fertile, Lunar

I recently went on a vacation to Cape Verde!  Why?  Because when else in my life would I ever get around to visiting this small chain of islands right off the coast of Senegal?  Plus, Cape Verde came with rave reviews from every visitor it’d ever had.  Called a mix of Africa, Europe, and Brazil, the islands were colonized by Portugal (and pirates), so everyone speaks Portugeuse and Creole.  The Peace Corps program in Cape Verde recently closed because... they achieved development (I mean, not really, but kind of really). Cape Verde sounded like a magical, magical place.  I almost expected to find fountains of chocolate and swans of gold.  (Side note: I did end up sitting at the bottom of a rainbow.  There was no gold though... unless you count beautiful memories as gold!)

But anyway, Cape Verde.  I went with three girls from my stage, Alana, Katie, and Sharon, and it was lovely.  Instead of taking you day by day through our trip, I’ll just share a few things I learned:

1. Cape Verde: the country where people approach you not to trick, rob, or harass you, but give unsolicited directions

 Cape Verde’s hospitality freaked me out.  In Senegal, I’ve become so accustomed to ignoring everyone who yells and approaches me in urban, public places that Cape Verdeans made me incredibly uncomfortable with their friendliness and lack of motive.  We were stopped in the street, unsolicited, and offered touristic advice... that had absolutely no benefit to the person giving it.  We were given names and numbers of helpful individuals by total strangers... who then happily went on their way, never proposing marriage or asking to be introduced to other potential American wives.  Not one person ever tried to charge us more than the local price.  It was frightening for me.  Mostly, I responded to these warm and engaging displays of kindness with discomfort, shifty eyes, and flight from the scene.  I have fully integrated into Senegal. 

My friends eat accurately priced street food.

2. Climbing a volcano requires appropriate footwear

We spent time on the capital’s island, Santiago, and Fogo, home of a destructive volcano.  Actually, the volcano isn’t super destructive, though it is active. No one perished during its last eruption (1995), and the lava was pretty contained to a specific part of the island.  In fact, as we drove the village at the base of the last crater, we got to see the shift between the lava-land and the untouched areas.  Most of our drive was lush, beautiful, and green!  

Beautiful Fogo!

Then, we turned a corner, and suddenly, in the immortal words of our guidebook, the landscape was “wild, lunar, and fertile.” 

WILD LUNAR FERTILE

The top edge of the lava crater, the highest point on all of the islands and basically a giant mountain, loomed in the distance.  Our Fogolese mission was to conquer its summit (and its heart).   Everyone who had done the climb before said it was super fun!

You will be conquered.

Scaling this peak turned into one of the most challenging experiences of my life. 

Island mountain climb, to me, conjures images of winding, grassy trails at a subtle but steady incline, possibly with playful goats leaping around me.  The Fogo climb turned out to be a three hour, near vertical, near-rock climbing experience through rain and clouds where one wrong step meant plummeting to my death.  I’m not even kidding. During the climb, I thought a lot about how people with life threatening illnesses do things like climb mountains, feel good about it, and star in yogurt ads.  I did not have any of these feelings as I climbed.  Also, I was wearing Chacos.  Without socks, which was a grave, grave error.  I also kept thinking about how we were the only living things on the mountain and how the mountain could easily kill us to keep a clean record.  Other than the occasional flower bursting through lava rock, it was just us and the ash. 

But I was very impressed when I got to the top.  It was pretty cool to look down at a volcanic crater and see the sulfur rising from the ash.  And I did have mild yogurt-ad adrenaline.

Yaayyyy!  No deaths!

Unfortunately, descending the mountain proved an even greater problem for my Chacos, as we had to wade through tiny rocks for most of the downhill.  At one point, the pain of tiny rocks cutting into my fragile, sacred feet led me to take off my shoes, sit down like a frustrated child, and tell everyone to go on without me. 

Luckily, my fortunes soon changed... because Sharon gave me her socks AND the descent opened up into a giant ski run that we practically slid, skid, and somesaulted down.  And THAT was awesome.  I think that’s exactly why no one had told us how hard the climb was: the descent completely wipes out memories of the ridiculously difficult journey up.

But I swore I would not forget. And that is why I dedicated so much space to Cape Verde lesson #2: No Chacos on the volcano.  But ultimate moral of the story:  You should still do it!  Wear sneakers.

3. Evangelicals all around the world use the same tricks to get you into their church

So while we were in the volcano town, Portela, we befriended a woman at the local “museum” (which was actually pretty informative, I shouldn’t knock it... it told all about volcanoes and the history of the island, focusing especially on a French duke who was “captivated” by about 9 different beautiful Fogo women and spawned the numerous blond haired and blue eyed anomalies who exist all over present day Fogo).  Anyway, we asked this museum lady to give us directions to a wine place, and she complied.  Later we found out that she invited some other tourists (our French bffs Jean “Farley” and Helene) to a traditional music ceremony.  Not inviting us must have been an honest mistake!  We’ll go anyway!

So that night, we head to the “traditional music performance.” The songs were lovely at first.  But then it turned into an epic Seventh Day Adventist church service.  In Portugeuse and Creole. For 90 minutes.  The woman made us sit in the front and there was no escape.  OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK!  She got us good with her promises of “traditional music.”  And obviously we weren’t originally invited because we were the heathens searching for alcohol.

Eating and drinking alcohol with our new friends not at a church

On the other hand, the church service was part of a 33 day celebration of marriage and family, which we scoffed at until seemed we learned that our volcano guide is one of 37 children and his Catholic father has three different, unmarried baby mamas.

4. Cape Verdeans take shots at 10am (shot o’clock)

One of the most confusing aspects of our trip was trying to discover when Cape Verdeans eat.  It seemed that every time we went to a restaurant, we were the only ones there.  Furthermore, we never saw any of our Cape Verdean hosts actively eating food.  During our trip, we eventually ate in restaurants at every hour of the day but never solved this mystery.  On the other hand, we did make one discovery at 10am.  While we dined on our breakfast in an obviously empty place, a man came in.  Life!  He promptly bought a shot and then left.  Immediately, two different men came in.  They downed shots and left.  The stream continued... all in all, about 12 men came in, took shots, and left.  All of them were public transportation drivers.  It was 10am.  We had been warned that most Cape Verdeans enjoy imbibing to excess, but didn’t quite believe it until this moment.  After this point, we started realizing that yes, most people around us were drunk all the time.  So it goes in Catholic countries!  Luckily, the intoxicated Cape Verdeans seemed to be, uniformly, happy drunks.  The alcohol never seemed to bring out tears or anger, as it does at so many American college parties.

5. Senegal holds a surprising, subtle advantage over Cape Verde on one singular aspect of transportation

Initially, we were awed by Cape Verde’s public transportation fleet.  Instead of old Peugeots, Cape Verdeans hail down shiny Toyota vans, and instead of taxis that continue to run even when the keys fall out of the ignition, Cape Verdeans drive brand new Corolla taxis.  It was all very fancy.  But when we tried to cross Santiago, traveling between two of the island’s biggest cities, we found Cape Verde’s weakness: getting people into their cars.  In Senegal, cars are filled one at a time.  Sometimes they fill fast, sometimes they fill slow; this system frustrates us Americans used to transport leaving at a set hour, full or not.  But Cape Verde... seems to fill multiple cars halfway... then have them drive in very, very, very small circles, fighting over passengers who never seem to appear. 

We got in our car thinking it would pick up a few more people and soon head out, but instead, it started driving in circles.  The first rodeo ride around the block was fun.  The second wasn’t so bad either.  But the fourteenth and fifteenth turns around the tiny town square started to make us car sick.  At one point, I saw a man with a bag and yelled at our driver, “THERE’S ONE!”, trying to enjoy the fun game of winning passengers.  I nearly killed us all.  Our driver burned rubber turning around, took corners on two wheels, and raced two other vans who had spotted the same guy.  When we got to him, the man on the street threw his hands up in defense.  “I’m not going anywhere!  I’m a doctor!  I’m walking to the hospital for my shift!”  Fail.

Eventually we asked to be dropped off at a restaurant until the car filled up enough to leave.  No problem, said the easygoing Cape Verdeans.  And they did let us off, then came and got us 30 minutes later.  Which would never happen in Senegal, so add that point in the column about shiny vans and Corollas.  Cape Verde still ends up ahead in this race.

6. Only Germans on cruise ships come to Cape Verde in November

For a semi-tourist destination, Cape Verde was eerily empty.  True, it is not the high tourist season, but we hardly expected to be the only young backpackers... anywhere.  On our first day in Praia, the capital, the only tourists we saw were retirees on a day trip from their cruise.  Furthermore, we ended up on the same vacation as a large group of older German couples, but they managed to beat us by just a few minutes to every destination and somehow always take the last hotel rooms.  Even as we reached the top of the volcanic crater, the Germans were already there to “cheer” us on (and criticize my footwear choice... thank you, Fraulein, I AM AWARE THESE CHACOS WERE A POOR SELECTION).

Ready for an exciting night on the town!  With elderly tourists.

 We did manage to make two tourist friends, the aforementioned Jean “Farley” and Helene.  In a twist that could be poignant and beautiful (but was actually just lazy), we never even learned their last names.  They were a French brother and sister dynamic duo, not much unlike Katie and Charlie Pollak.  They came to represent all of our hopes and dreams, and we will hold them in our hearts forever.

We also met two travel writers from Lonely Planet.  Their first words to us were, “Where are all of the other young people?”  Then they wrote down some of our tips and observations, because we were young people.  They also gave us an excellent recommendation for a fancy, tucked away dinner hideaway where we (along with Farley and Helene, obviously) had one of the best dinners of our trip. 

7. Cape Verde shows the best stuff on TV

 Cape Verdean television... is amazing.  We were treated to Brazil’s Funniest Home Videos, a strange movie featuring Rob Schneider as a prisoner teaching his fellow inmates that rape is wrong but true love between two men can be beautiful, Glee, music videos from 1996, inspiring documentaries about men without limbs, news clips entirely about the success of Gangnam Style, and Schindler’s List.

Moreover, on International AIDS Day, we were treated to a local parade and a nighttime concert.  I thought the concert was jammin’ yo.  Until Sharon whispered in my ear, “Maybe we should leave... I think this is offensive.”  I was shocked.  “What?!  Why?  Why would this be offensive?!”  She stared at me, then motioned toward the stage.  “Lisa. They’re all... midgets.”  And then I looked harder.  And my God, I had thought the stage was sunken.  But indeed, all of the rappers on stage were little people.  So... that was weird.  And maybe offensive.  But they were good rappers!

In all seriousness though, Cape Verde was a lovely place – beautiful with lush green mountains, beaches, wild lunar and fertile volcanoes, delicious food, and incredibly hospitable people.  But at the end of the day, I still wanted to come back to Senegal, because at this point, it is the country (other than America), that I know best: I can speak the language, communicate with the people, know what to anticipate and expect – and that is comfort. 

Plus, this guy running out to meet me when I came home didn’t hurt either. 

BEST FRIENDS!!!!

The Ghost of Tabaski

My relationship with animals in this country has been well-documented.  From the nightly terror of strange sounds in my bedroom to the ram who tried to kill me, from the microscopic bugs who invaded every surface of my house to the cockroach who furrows into my blanket each night as though he is my puppy – I think it’s safe to say I pretty much hate them all.  Some of my friends have semi-cute domesticated puppies and kittens, but honestly, I can’t look at them without thinking about opportunistic infections.  Any inkling of pet companionship is safely eclipsed by my desire to sleep through the night, not get rabies, and live another year.  Boo to animals.

But all of the preceding moments of animal disgust, trauma, and fright were nothing compared to what happened to me on the morning of October 29.  I had just wrapped up a lovely Tabaski weekend with my family.  Tabaski, you may remember, is the holiday commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, and God’s subsequent pardon to replace the boy with a sheep instead.  Last year, my family killed three sheep for 11 people.  This year, because as my host mom says, “EVERY YEAR WE MUST GET BETTER AND DO MORE!”, we killed four sheep for 11 people.  I had given my host mom some money for Tabaski, not realizing that I was signing myself up to split a sheep with her.  This was our sheep:

Maimouna poses with my goat.  Handsome thing.

Tabaski came and went with the usual fanfare.  The men sharpened their swords with glee, the women pulled up lawn chairs to watch the slaughter.  If you imagine Tabaski as a solemn ritual sacrifice, you shouldn’t come to my house.  It was like a spectator sport, in a good way, and actually kind of brought to mind the hog roasts of my childhood, minus the beer.  The only exception was my little host brother Mohammad who spent most of the day staring off into space.  Luckily, my host mom had a simple explanation: “Oh, he’s just reflecting on the murders.”  She insisted that this year, Mohammad grasped that he watched four goats die a bloody death.  She may have been right. 

Mohammad, traumatized.  Bigue, age 5, is clearly used to this whole Tabaski thing by now. Also, I hope everyone likes my "working Senegalese woman's outfit" and blood-smeared forehead.

Anyway, so Tabaski was great.  I woke up Monday morning, three days after Tabaski, crawled out of my mosquito net, and pushed open to the door to my bathroom.  And that -- that’s when I saw them.

Maggots.  Hundreds and hundreds of maggots. 

Covering the floor of my shower.  Crawling down the walls.  Squirming and shaking all over my shampoo bottles, my toothbrush, my toothpaste.  Inside my soap.  Around my razor.  Collectively, all of their movements were so spastic that I thought I might just be experiencing a rush of blood to the head, like seeing stars, maggot-shaped stars.  Over the past year and a half, I have seen three cockroaches in that bathroom.  I had never seen one maggot. 

But no, this was real.  And they were actually physically everywhere.  Everywhere.  It was like a Hitchcock movie. 

Obviously, I took no photos of the maggots because I was frozen in the clutches of insanity.  If you want some good comparisons, I’m sure you could google “maggot images” and begin to imagine my life. 

I backed away from the bathroom and practically fell down trying to escape my house.  I grabbed the first host sister I saw and managed to express my wish for her to follow me.  She was skeptical, as the entire family is, of my fears.  A few weeks earlier, I had stepped on what I still contend was a snake, though they said “It was just a really huge fast moving black worm that must have crawled out of the toilet, we have them in our house all the time.”  That incident had involved me screaming a lot, and them making fun of me a lot.  So reluctantly, Mame followed me into my bathroom.

Inside, she took a look, and the expression on her face stayed steady.  “Oh,” she said.  “Insects.” 

I stared at her.  “Insects?”  I repeated.  “Insects?  I KNOW they are insects!  What are they doing here?  WHY?  I have never seen this insect before!  WHAT ARE THESE?” 

She started sweeping them up with her broom, vainly trying to get them into the dustpan before they’d, literally, worm their way out.  “Hmm,” she mused.  “Maybe because of the sheep we are drying on your roof?”

Hmm.  Maybe because of the DEAD SHEEP SITTING ON THE ROOF OF MY BATHROOM?  You think?  YOU THINK??? 

“Oh.  Yes.  That makes sense,” I replied, trying to match her level of calm.  Not understanding why all of the dead sheep were ON THE ROOF OF MY BATHROOM. 

“Yes, the dead sheep,” she replied.  “Well, just keep sweeping them out.”

And then, taking a great deal of maggots in her dustpan, Mame left me to my bathroom, and the maggots that were continuing to creep through the walls, down my drain, and congregate under any solitary object.  Every time I lifted up anything, I’d find a new club of maggots had already formed beneath.  Over the course of the day, I swept about six or seven times until my host mom finally told me that they’d removed the dead animals from my roof.  Eventually, I poured an entire jar of bleach all over my bathroom. I did feel lucky that the maggots had favored that locale instead of my bedroom. 

But even after the bleaching, something was still off.  For one, dead maggots kept appearing in the bathroom.  Did you know that when a white maggot dies, it turns black and resembles lizard poop?  I learned a lot of things.  But worse than the sight of dead maggots was the smell that permeated my room for days.  I didn’t know if the smell was dead maggots in my drains or weird pieces of sheep meat lingering in secret places or, in my worst nightmares, beagle-sized rats rotting in unrelated incidents under my bookcase.  Sometimes it was hard to breathe.  I tried to ignore it.

And then, when I awoke on Friday morning and started my usual routine of laying in my bed for awhile, I look outside of my mosquito net to see it covered in gigantic bot flies.  Thanks to Emily Kraus, a former PCV and bug expert, I had learned all about the different kinds of flies a few months ago.  And these were the giant, nasty flies that feed on rotting carcasses.  My room was full of them.  Apparently, the maggots who had survived the sweeping-bleaching-angry Lisa epidemic had finally hatched.  And clearly, they were the most reproductively fit, which translated into grotesquely big bodies, wings, eyes, and a penchant for blood.  Again, boo to animals.

Flies are hard to kill.  But luckily, I was headed out for the weekend, so I only had to deal with them for a few hours.  When I left, my little house was in quite a sorry state, smelling like a combination of poop, dead animals, and rotting cheese while also covered in flies.  I figured that when I returned in two days, one of two things would happen: everything would be miraculously dead and better, or everything would be miraculously alive and worse.  One of my friends added a third possibility that involved Jeff Goldblum crouched on my toilet, waiting for me to come home.

Luckily, I returned from my weekend to find all of the flies not only dead, but gone (surely a testament to my gecko population), and the smell mysteriously dissipated.  A Tabaski miracle! 

So now, the maggots and their adult selves are a thing of the past, but I still do live in fear.   On the other hand, this elevated experience of terror really has made other things pale in comparison.  For instance, the cockroach that creeps into my bed every night really does seem like a harmless puppy compared to a cult of maggots watching me bathe.  For this, I am thankful.  Ultimately, I’m looking forward to erasing these memories with new, upcoming holidays, like Tamharit and Thanksgiving and Christmas and President’s Day, and hoping that they don’t inspire lingering ghosts of dead animals to come and take vengeance on me days later.

America's Careless Whispers

When I first came to Senegal, I remember being acutely aware of how much I was missing in any given moment.  Words flew by in conversation, people laughed, people screamed, and I grew accustomed to never knowing what was going on.  Eventually, I learned to listen for key phrases, smile, and nod, but at the end of the day, I’m still just trudging through, picking up scraps of knowledge like a starving dog.

I’ve noticed this pattern most with television.  At my house, the TV gets turned on before dinner and keeps us all company for the next few hours.  If I don’t have anything else to do, I sit with my family under the semblance of “watching,” but really, I usually end up staring at the TV with my mind everywhere else.  Lately this has backfired in a number of ways.  For instance, the other day it took me a good five minutes before I even realized that the soccer commentary I was watching was in English.  Even then, I found I was so used to blocking out the TV’s words that I could barely follow what was being said.  

Anyway, I give you all this background to illustrate how hard it is to come by news here.  Sure, I’m on the internet a few times a week, but reading all of the headlines at such sporadic intervals isn’t something I’ve gotten used to.  And I would love to know not only the news, but how Senegalese people see it: unfortunately, French and Wolof snippets can only get me so far.   So, ashamedly, I admit that I've mostly given up on keeping up.

Until.  A miracle happened.  And I stumbled upon a Saturday afternoon program called “E-Mag: English Language Magazine.”  THE NEWS, VIA SENEGALESE JOURNALISTS, IN ENGLISH. 

This picture has nothing to do with anything, but I realized I don't put a lot of pictures on my blog anymore.  I guess it does show Bigue, the child I taught about term limits.  This is us at Korite 2012.

Finally!  Finally, for the first time in my service, I had the chance to hear the nuances, biases, jokes, opinions, confusions, and perception of the Senegalese media in my mother tongue!  I fully admit that I’m a connotation nerd.  But after 19 months of prying for simple facts, understanding every single word would fascinate you too.

E-Mag started off by covering local events, such as President Macky Sall’s replacement of numerous cabinet ministers.  I knew it happened, but suddenly, in English, I understood WHY and HOW.  Amazing!  But E-Mag only got better from there.  The second segment was a commentary about Hurricane Sandy coverage.  Basically, the narrator criticized African journalists for dedicating so many days and so much airspace to an event so far removed from African lives.  And I have to say, I somewhat agree with him.  He spoke of the numerous floods and famines that had rocked the African continent all year, questioning why those events didn’t deserve as much, if not more, media coverage.  It was quite a passionate and convincing plea for local journalism.  It also made me wonder if sometimes when I passingly hear references to the “United States of America” on the news, if I’m not hearing a factual story, but a vitriolic cry of anger.  Hmm.

More unrelated pictures.  Tabaski 2012!  I don't know who took this picture or why it turned out this way... like all Senegalese parties with my family, no alcohol was involved.

The next segment moved into International News, and the only story was Hurricane Sandy.  So apparently the editors were willing to give Mr. Commentary a platform, but not indulge his ideas.  So it goes.

Hurricane coverage, from a Senegalese perspective, was pretty interesting too.  They approached it with the utmost seriousness, despite the fact that flooding in Dakar over a 6 week period this past rainy season was probably far more disease-ridden and destructive than Sandy’s aftermath.  No one on the Senegalese news mentioned that fact though.  Instead, they sympathized and surveyed Sandy’s damage and interviewed her disenfranchised just as any American network would.  It’s strange—personal catastrophe is just so much different in America than here: yet no one brought up the comparison, and no one presented a pertinent point of reference.  I watched the reporter interview a New Jersey man who lost all of his independent construction business supplies to neighborhood looters.  It was incredibly sad, and I felt for him.  But highlighting it and showing it on Senegalese TV did feel weird, I’m not going to lie.  Despite the concern my family and friends here have voiced about the hurricane, I can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking, secretly, as they watch.  Here, losing everything you own to looters is a slow Tuesday, natural disasters rip apart neighborhoods yearly, and no one has any carpet to replace, because they realize it would only get ruined anyway.  Consequently, I can’t figure out what they make of American problems.

But the last segment of the show was my favorite: American election coverage!  To discuss the elections, the show invited a University Cheikh Anta Diop professor of American Politics and English to answer some questions. 

First, they asked him, “Why is this election important?”  He responded, and I’ve tried to make this verbatim, “Well, first of all, this is the first time, you see, that a black American president is running for a second term.  Second of all, the world is in an economic crisis and recession.  Third of all, Hurricane Sandy.”  All of these are true facts.  But I love the fact that for all of the months and years of election mumbo-jumbo we are bombarded with in America, all of the analyses and criticisms and commentaries, this man sums up how Senegal sees all of it in one, plain sentence. 

Not done with pictures that have no basis.  This year for Halloween, I made a Rice Krispie treat ghost!  But the store only had Cocoa Krispies... so it was a Senegalese ghost.  My family ate that up.  Literally and figuratively.

Then they asked the scholar how the American election system works.  In what may be the best thing I’ve heard all month, he answered, “The system... it is... very sick.  It is a sick system.  It is a complicated system, and it is a sick system.  The system is sick.”  He then delved into a slightly more detailed description of the electoral college and the travesties it can inspire, pointing specifically to the case of Al Gore.  I tried to explain the electoral college to my host mom tonight too.  She made a disgusted face.  It is a sick system.

So thanks to E-mag, my horizons were properly expanded last week.  But the election-inspired enlightenment was far from over.  On the following Tuesday, Kathleen, Jenna (a new embassy fellow), and our Senegalese co-teachers articulated the key points of Romney and Obama for our English class in order to have a mock election.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that on the whole, Senegalese, and most of Sub-Saharan Africa, are a little obsessed with Obama.  But, in an effort to talk about politics and making informed voting decisions, we decided to really articulate what each candidate stood for.  Immigration.  Economics.  Foreign Policy. Guns. Birth Control.  And perhaps most importantly...

Gay Marriage.

As much as I would love for all of Senegal to continue their unbridled love for Obama, I think a lot of them learned that he and American politics are far more complicated than they realized.  Senegal is a notoriously homophobic country, and homosexual acts can lead to imprisonment here.  Abortions are also illegal and hardly an issue for debate.  Kathleen and I did our best to articulate how most of these issues boil down to government involvement versus personal choice, and I told the class they needed to really consider which issues were most important to them: they probably wouldn’t agree with either candidate on every point.  When we tallied up our mini election after class, Obama was winning by merely one vote.   

Today my five year old host sister, Bigue, asked me if Obama’s next term would be for 20 years, not far off the crazy term of Senegal’s previous president.  I told her that American presidents get four and sometimes eight years at the most.  She didn’t believe me, but last April, the Senegalese people came out en masse to kick out their long-serving leader, 64% to 36%.  They understood what needed to be done.  They did it.  Eventually, and hopefully, they have started to ensure that Senegalese five year olds stop seeing 20 year terms as normal.

So in honor of Election Day, this is my contribution.  Here’s to everyone’s attempt to find out the real story, to hear the biases you may start to block out, to talk to people honestly, and to trust them to draw their own opinions.  Listen to different kinds of news.  Realize that no candidate is perfect.  Speak with five year olds and clarify misconceptions.  Perhaps most of all, accept the results of your democracy and your surroundings gracefully.  By the time I put this on the internet, the American election will most likely be tallied and decided.  If you voted, you did the best you could.  It’s all we can really do, but it’s actually quite a lot.

Sorry if this ended up sounding like a soapbox.  My next entry will probably be about how I found hundreds of maggots in my bathroom on Halloween, so don’t worry, my life is still weird.  Here, I'll also add some unrelated photos.  Until next time!

Final installment: Abby and I carved a watermelon in honor of American pumpkins.  This one was named SKY PUMPKIN.  Notice it's various sky images.  Moons.  Stars. Clouds.  Lightning Bolts.  SKY PUMPKIN!  Also notice how trashy my candy necklace choker makes me look.  Yay.

That Time I Got Robbed

The world is not a safe place – that much has been obvious to me ever since the day my mother and her impromptu neighborhood watch group discovered that our local bike thief was in cahoots with our ice cream lady.  It turns out that she didn’t have only ice cream sandwiches in the back of her trunk, but a delinquient son scoping out our sweet ten-speeds. Also, her garage was full of torn apart bikes, like a sad childhood graveyard.  That experience taught me to lock up my shit.  It also led me to do things like wear money belts, even when it leads people to assume I’m wearing a diaper, and occasionally sprint for blocks at a time in heels, just to keep my reflexes sharp.  I’m a safe girl.  I like safety.

Dramatic representation of my ice cream lady circa 1993

But as we all know, sometimes precautions and awareness aren’t enough.   Before coming to Senegal, I (safely and cautiously) looked over some crime statistics.  In some ways, they were striking, but once I compared them the rates of where I was living at the time (Logan Square), I relaxed a little bit.  On paper, Logan Square seemed pretty dangerous.  In reality, I left my car unlocked on the street for 9 months without a problem.  So you never know.

Now, after living in Senegal for about 19 months, I can admit to having seen my fair share of crime.  I would guess that almost all of my friends have experienced some sort of petty theft, purse snatching, pickpocketing, or phone hijacking by this point: though luckily, these are incidents that pass relatively harmlessly and silently, save for the incurred losses.  But I’ve also had a handful of friends deal with far more serious and violent situations.  As time went on, it became to seem more and more improbable that I could leave this country without a blemish on my security record.  Paranoia and money belts can only get us so far, or as Fiona Apple would say, the world is full of pits and crevices that will try to kill you.  Plus, especially in places like Dakar, I admit that my fancy hoop earrings from Claire’s and wedge sandals bought on the side of the road make me some sort of walking target.  The question became not if, but when, someone would try to pull one over on me.

September 14 was the night of reckoning.

I had just finished our Girls’ Camp.  I was flying high!  It had been an exhausting week, but I came to Dakar to recuperate for a few days and see some friends off to America.  After eating an entire pizza by myself, I headed downtown to meet some other volunteers with my friends Aimee and Kirstin.  We had a wonderful taxi ride.  In fact, it was so wonderful that when we arrived at our destination in downtown Dakar, I said as I unzipped my clutch, “Wow guys, that was just SUCH a great cab ride!”

At that moment, a hand reached in through the taxi window and snatched my clutch out of my hands.  Oh no!  My money!  My bank card!  My phone!  My chapstick!  Best cab ride ever RUINED!

OR WAS IT???

The answer, my friends, lies in a reaction I did not expect out of myself, though I must admit that in my elaborate crime anticipation scenarios, I always vowed to use the last remnants of fast-twitch muscle fibers that cross country had not destroyed to chase down an assalient.  I mean, you might as well, right?  Especially if you’re in a public place?  It’s worth a shot?  I think that’s where my head was.

So the next thing my friends knew, I was rolling around on the ground outside the cab yelling expletives BECAUSE I HAD DECIDED TO JUMP OUT THE CAB WINDOW and chase down the thief.  Was I sitting next to a door?  Yes.  Do I understand how door handles work?  Yes.  And yet... the window beckoned me.  The route to which my clutch had been lost beckoned me.  So I followed the clutch, through the open window, onto the street, and began running in the general direction of the purse-snatcher, screaming “SACCKAAT SACCKAAT SACCKAAT!” which is the Wolof word for thief.  Because WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT.

The inspiration for every moment of my life

Help arrived quickly and efficiently.  Brave and courageous Peace Corps volunteers jumped over fences, through shrubbery, and around gates to come to my aid: truly, a league of extraordinary gentlemen. The United States Marine Corps also came to my assistance.  But most importantly, about 25 loitering Senegalese men took on my cause, formed an angry mob, and set out to hunt down the man who took my beloved possessions.

But despite the group’s enthusiasm, it seemed like the culprit had escaped unscathed, probably during the moments I lost peeling myself from the pavement after rashly jumping out a window.  And so I gave up and gave in to Senegal, conceding defeat after an exhausting week of work and reporting my possessions (on another phone) as stolen. 

But then!  The mob returned, a scared man in a Senegalese soccer jersey in tow!  “Was this the man who stole your purse?” the mob cried, thrusting him toward me.  I didn’t want to respond because it had all happened so fast: he seemed to be wearing the right shirt, but I also had no idea what punishment awaited this man.  What if I sent an innocent man to Senegalese jail?  I tried to avoid categorically saying yes, instead saying, “I... think so?”  But everyone was sure, “This was the man, he is a known thief, this is the man, this is not the first time!”  As one impassioned volunteer chased after the mob yelling, “Bring him to justice!  WE MUST BRING HIM TO JUSTICE!”, I trailed after crying, “Wait!  Wait!  Pardon him!  He is pardoned by the goodness of the rest of you!  He is pardoned by the goodness of his countrymen!”  No one listened.  Also, no one would give me my wallet.  It took a few blocks of marching until I realized that the accused didn’t even HAVE my wallet.  This did not feel like justice to me.

Meanwhile, near the original scene of the crime, my cab mate Aimee was still combing the area like a good CSI agent.  Suddenly, she was approached by a kind gentleman: “Floran?  Are you Floran?”  Immediately realizing the significance of this coincidence, she took on my identity, rejoicing, “Yes!  That is me!”  The kind man extended his hand, which held my wallet.  “This was thrown at me about 15 minutes ago,” he said, handing it over to her.  “I think it’s yours.”  And indeed, so Aimee, using her Sereer language skills, recovered my wallet, money, bank card, cell phone, chapstick and all.  How the kind gentleman somehow missed connecting a fleeing man chucking a wallet at him, an angry mob passing his guard post numerous times, and a depressed, teary American girl moping by is beyond me, but he did.  But in the end, he did manage to maneuver the wallet back into my possession, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

Aimee has been elevated from gum shoe to detective (skipping the rookie phase)

I’m not sure what happened to the thief – after trying to pardon him and failing, I gave up and returned to our original destination.  I bought a beer for Aimee and a kebab for the bar bouncer who apparently hunted down the thief, and then we all went dancing.  I literally stuck my purse down my pants for the entire night, without shame, as a way of dealing with my stage 1 PTSD.

Ultimately, I felt pretty lucky that my first, and hopefully last, brush with Senegalese crime was so tame, and moreover, had a happy ending.  Sure, there was the bad seed who stole my purse, but so many good seeds had come to my aid and defended my honor.  I still like to believe this is how the world works  – not only in Senegal, but everywhere.  Seeing it in action was quite a wonderful way to end what had been a crazy, topsy-turvy week.  

So cheers to everyone who helped me out of that sticky situation, to everyone who had to listen to me retell it numerous times in the style of Tai from Clueless, and to Senegal, for always pulling through when I least expect it.